


Needs of the Many

by MsWikit



Series: Sins of the Father Universe [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, Saren the Awful Father AU, Sins of the Father Universe, Well since we aren't getting that quarian DLC anytime soon, andromeda spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 09:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11825832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsWikit/pseuds/MsWikit
Summary: (Direct sequel to Sins of Father) Nihlus Kryik awakens, disoriented and confused, to find that he has been transported to another galaxy. The quarian ark for the Andromeda Initiative is in disarray, having taken on only a portion of its intended crew. Laden with desperate refugees from the Reaper War, Nihlus must help the frazzled and under-prepared Pathfinder Sura save what's left of the Milky Way's wayward people. But their best hope for avoiding certain death is locked in a seemingly unwinnable battle against his own mind.





	Needs of the Many

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought I'd do a sequel to this story, but I love this universe and I love Nihlus. RIP the Quarian Ark DLC.

Pain. Intense, unforgettable, blinding pain. Indigo blood on his hands. An arm on the ground. His? No- a friend’s. Pieces of friends across the ground: a leg, a mandible, part of a crest, an eye. He’s stumbling over them. There’s smoke. And then a sound. Deep as thunder, but _louder_. The battle cry of their destruction. Of death, of doom, of extinction. 

The harvest has begun.

A red light, focusing on him, casting his shadow across the battlefield that was once a city. 

“NIHLUS!”

Darkness.

Then, a light. He’s lying down, but moving quickly. People are yelling. Someone places an oxygen mask over his face. 

Darkness.

He opens his eyes and sees Jane. He reaches for her. She takes his hand and kisses it. 

“I’m sorry, Nihlus,” she says. She presses his hand to his chest and leans forward to kiss his forehead. “This is for the best. Victory, at any cost.”

Then, she’s gone. He feels strangely cold. 

Darkness.

*

Nihlus wakes up to what sounds like a million different alarms. He sits up suddenly, and immediately feels dizzy. The room spins. Where is he? He grips the edge of his bed to steady himself. But- it’s not a bed.

It’s a…pod?

“Easy,” says a voice. Beside him is a quarian woman. She sets a hand on his shoulder. “Give yourself a minute to adjust. It’ll be the only minute you get, from the sound of things.”

An explosion of some sort rocks the room. He realizes he’s in a med bay of some kind. There are beds lining the opposite wall. Everything smells vaguely of bleach and antiseptic. In a way, it feels almost _too_ clean. There are a handful of doctors moving this way and that, helping people out of strange pods and into the beds. 

“What’s happening?” he asks. 

“We were followed, I'm guessing,” says the quarian. Another explosion shakes the room. The doctors brace against the beds and the walls, but some still don’t manage to stay on their feet. The sound of the alarms is deafening, and only seems to increase tenfold. “I know you have questions, but the Pathfinder needs you right now. Here, I’ll help you stand.” 

She takes his arm and helps him up. His legs feel stiff and cold. He has several bandaged wounds, all of which ache. And why is he so tired? “Where am I?”

“Careful,” the quarian says, ignoring his question. She helps him out of the pod. “You haven’t been on your feet in six hundred years.” 

“What?” Nihlus demands. He yanks away from her, only to nearly fall. The quarian grabs him again. “What do you mean six hundred years? That’s not possible.” 

“You’ve been in cryo sleep,” the quarian says. “Nihlus Kryik, welcome to the Andromeda Initiative.”

Nihlus stares at her. It takes him a moment for him to process what she just said. Andromeda Initiative? What’s that? And then he remembers. The Initiative was sending arks bound for the Andromeda galaxy. All of them had departed by the time the Reapers arrived; all except one. 

_“Victory, at any cost.”_

No. No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t. 

The room shakes again, then tilts sharply to the right. Nihlus and everyone else in the room is sent sprawling. Pods and beds alike slide and scrape across the floor. Nihlus is thrown against the back wall. A pod comes barreling towards him. He scrambles to brace for the impact, only for it to never come. A pair of quarian feet stop the pod, and he finds the doctor lying beside him with her legs outstretched. She lets out a yell – the impact couldn’t have been painless – and slams her fist against the floor. 

“Go to the bridge!” she shouts. The room rights itself just as suddenly, and the doctor slumps forward and rubs her calves. 

“Are you going to be ok?” he asks, standing hesitantly.

The quarian looks up at him. He can see the faint glow of her eyes behind her tinted helmet. “Quarian legs were made for jumping and climbing the cliffs of Rannoch. They can take an impact. I’ll be alright. Now go. Get to the bridge; find Pathfinder Sura.” 

Nihlus hesitates, then does as she says. He stumbles into the hallway, where a directory points him to the right. Part of the corridor has lost power. The only light comes from the spark of several exposed wires, which he ducks around gingerly. He has orders, so instinct triumphs over disorientation and pain. Get to the bridge and find the Pathfinder, whoever (or whatever) that is. 

It’s chaos. The body of a hulking elcor blocks the hallway, forcing Nihlus to climb over it. There’s an unbelievable amount of smoke, more of it than he’s ever experienced before. At its worst he can barely see his hands outstretched in front of him. Just when he thinks he should begin to seriously worry about smoke inhalation, someone grabs his hand and pulls him forward. The smoke grows steadily thinner until he is standing in a pentagonal junction between hallways. 

A human stands in front of him. His hair is shaved close on two sides, and has grown out a bit on the top of his head. It’s always looked strange to Nihlus; it’s like they’re trying to grow a crest. His face is scarred, as well as his armor; it looks like he’s worn it through a thousand battles. 

“Thank fuck,” the human says. “You’re still alive.” 

“Who are you?” Nihlus demands.

“Ishmael,” the human says. “The second-in-command of this merry band. Come on.”

An eclectic group of people hurry past. There’s a couple of quarian marines, a few humans in mismatched armor, and an asari. Nihlus begins to follow Ishmael, ignoring the frantic pack at first. But a shock of red hair catches his eye. He sees her turn around the corner, casting one last glance as she hurries after her group.

“Jane…” he says softly. 

“Hey, can you focus for two seconds? We’re all a couple minutes away from certain death, if you haven’t noticed,” Ishmael says, snapping his fingers in front of Nihlus’s face.

Of course she wouldn’t just send him into Andromeda on his own. Of course she came with him…well, he’ll find her. Once the immediate danger is passed, he can hunt her down and get some answers. 

For now, he has a job to do.

*

The bride is, to its credit, the most high-tech thing Nihlus has ever seen. It’s even more advanced than the Normandy. Holo-screens on all sides, a large galaxy map, high-power computers and monitors. A giant window wraps around most of the room. Someone has funneled a lot of money into this Andromeda project. It seems like such a waste for such a crazy, shot-in-the-dark idea. 

At the galaxy map stands a quarian woman. She wears a garb he’s never seen on a quarian. It’s longer than most shawls, stopping at the backs of her knees. The shawl itself is silver and covered with intricate lace designs, and cinches at the waist with a gold belt. It looks vaguely ceremonial and out of place in this chaos. Come to think of it…Nihlus hasn’t ever really seen a quarian ceremonial anything. Despite working with Tali for a couple of years, he knows very little about their culture. 

“Thank the ancestors he’s up,” the quarian says. She’s smaller than the two of them, but seems to be in charge. “Any cryo sickness?”

“I…no?” Nihlus feels fine. Relatively, at least. He’s sore and disoriented, and doesn’t really know what cryo sickness consists of. But he’s alive and moving. That must count for something. 

“Good,” the quarian says. “I’m Pathfinder Sura’Xemis vas Keelah Si’yah. We’ve been followed. Bring us around, Yator.”

The ship slowly turns, and their worst nightmare comes into view. A Reaper, floating steadily towards them. Its red eye glowing, preparing another blast. 

“Brace for impact!” someone yells.

Nihlus manages to react quick enough and grips a nearby table. The ship lurches hard as another beam hits. Somehow, even more alarms begin to go off. How many damn things does the ship have? 

“Well? What do we do?” Sura asks him. 

“Do we have an entire fleet of ships at our disposal?” Nihlus asks. He gestures to the Reaper that is coming ever closer. Though he tries not to let it show, Nihlus can only feel resignation. The ship is already crippled. The Reaper is clearly moving in for the death blow. “Otherwise, I don’t know how to kill it.”

Ishmael stares at him in shock. “What?!”

“You and Shepard spent years going on about these things, and you don’t know how to kill them?! There has to be- there has to be a structural weakness, or-” Sura begins. Then, she sighs heavily and rests her hands on the controls of the galaxy map. One can feel the weight of a heavy burden on her shoulders, just be looking at how she stands. It almost reminds him of how Saren was, towards the end of things. And how Jane has been leading up to this. 

“…it’s over,” Sura says. She lifts her head to look up at the Reaper. “After everything. It’s over.”

The ship suddenly lurches again, throwing most people on the bridge off-balance. Nihlus pulls himself up slowly and stares at the window. The Reaper has been obscured by some sort of…cloud? It has a strange orange and yellow color, like muted fire. In a way it’s…strangely beautiful. Screens across the bridge flicker and die, some of which in a shower of sparks. The alarms suddenly cut off, which is a small blessing.

The Reaper attempts to move closer, but seems unable to navigate the cloud. The closer it gets, the more it also seems to malfunction. Its strange legs twitch and jerk. Its glowing red eye flickers. Seeming almost baffled, it quickly retreats off into the darkness of space.

“…what just happened?” Ishmael asks.

“This stuff just saved our lives,” Sura says. Her voice is full of quiet awe.

“This stuff might also just kill us!” the pilot, apparently named Yator, calls. “I’m going to try to navigate us out of it, but we’ve already lost an engine!”

“Shit. The filtration systems-” Sura says. She quickly brings up a screen, then lets out a sigh of relief. “Still green. If those fail-”

“We all die, I get it,” Ishmael snaps. “You’ve said it a thousand times.”

Nihlus stares at them in quiet surprise. Ishmael introduced himself as Sura’s second-in-command. Why would any commanding officer let him speak to her that way? He looks to Sura for the famous quarian discipline he’s heard so much about. The Fleet does not tolerate dissenters or those who will not obey orders. In their situation, obedience can mean the difference between life and death. But Sura does nothing but turn back to the map. He realizes she’s shaking. 

_A weak leader_ , he notes. His eyes turn to Ishmael. _And a loose cannon second mate._

A stellar team this ark has. This certain can’t be the best the Andromeda Initiative could scrape together. All of this money, and they scrimp on the crew? What is going on here? 

They emerge from the strange cloud, and a million damage reports begin to light up the remaining consoles. But, for now, the danger has passed. Nihlus turns to go.

“Where are you going?” Sura demands suddenly.

“To find Commander Shepard,” he says. 

Sura and Ishmael exchange a look. Sura steps forward. “…Commander Shepard didn’t board this vessel. She stayed behind in the Milky Way.”

“I just saw her earlier,” Nihlus says. They’re being ridiculous. He saw her. Perhaps she stowed away in secret. But he knows she’s here. She wouldn’t just send him alone to another galaxy without first consulting with him. Victory at any cost wasn’t Jane’s style. That was always Saren. 

“I swear to you, she’s not on this ship,” Sura says. “We would have woken her up before you.”

“I know what I saw,” Nihlus snaps. With that he leaves, determined to find Jane. She owes him some answers.


End file.
